Where the Line Bleeds (22 page)

"You sat in the middle of our game," the little girl said.

"We needed a place to sit. Y'all go play somewhere else fore I whip
one of y'all," Christophe said.

"You ain't whipping me!" the girl retorted.

The lighter little boy, Little Man, raised his left hand and flipped
the bird at Christophe. Joshua couldn't help himself; he started to laugh
hard. Christophe's eyes turned to small, dark crescents and he choked out
a laugh.

"Y'all better get y'all badasses out of here and go play somewhere.
Get!" Christophe yelled.

Little Man had both hands in the air now, both middle fingers
extended, and was taking turns jabbing them in the air towards Christophe.
His dark clone, Dizzy, followed suit. Cece turned around and back to
Christophe; her braids swung out and the plastic barrettes at their ends
clicked softly as they shuttered against her face.

"Don't let me have to tell y'all's mamas. I know who they is...
Christophe told her.

She glared at him and then grabbed each of the boys by the arm
and yanked.

"Come on!" They screamed and ran after her; they tripped down the
bench and Joshua watched them run across the park towards the swings.
The girl never let go of their hands. When the trio was halfway across the
park, Little Man turned and when Joshua squinted, he could see he was
flipping them off again with his free hand as he was running. Laila was
shaking her head and laughing while Felicia doubled over as she held her
stomach; behind them, Javon snorted.

"Bad little fuckers."

Joshua watched the trio leap belly first onto the row of swings; they
stretched their arms out and kicked with their legs and swung high in the
air. Joshua had played that game; he knew they were pretending to fly. He
gazed past them to the row of cars parked at the side of the ditch and saw
Javon's car, and Bone's, and Marquise's, and a couple of others he couldn't
make out. They weren't all empty; he saw shadows, and heard the bass
from more than one stereo system. He watched the three swinging, saw
the girl slow her swing and tumble headfirst from the rubber into the dirt.
A figure skirted one of the cars and began walking across the field past the
swings towards the court.

The little boys tried to follow her lead but instead squirmed from
the seats and landed on their feet. Shrieking, they followed Cece at a run
as she led them to the wooden slide. She sandwiched herself behind the
two boys at the apex of the slide. They gripped each other between their
legs, lined up in a row, and she pushed them down in a train. Joshua had
played that game, too. The figure was nearing them; Joshua saw that it
was a man, an older man. The man had pants on in the heat, and he had
long, curly hair that he had topped with a navy blue baseball cap. Joshua
looked at the way he walked and nudged Christophe with his elbow and
nodded at the figure as he approached them and surfaced like a swimmer
into sharp relief. The man was walking around the court. He was searching
the faces of the people playing, and now he was pulling off his cap and
peering underneath the trees to pick out the figures on the benches. For
the first time in years, Joshua and Christophe saw their father.

Joshua's face was hot. He wanted to look away from the man, to
watch the trio of kids, to watch the game on the court, but he couldn't.
Sandman wasn't even looking at them; he was looking past them to Javon. Joshua doubted that he even recognized them. Sandman slapped
his cap against his thigh and walked underneath the trees to the side of
the bleachers to Javon. Joshua glanced past Christophe at Sandman and
saw that Christophe was staring straight ahead, and Joshua could see the
muscle of his jaw jumping like a darting minnow under his skin. He
heard Sandman whisper, "I got something for you, Javon." Javon jumped
from the bleachers and shuffled away further under the trees towards the
ditch with Sandman.

"We got next!" Christophe bit out. Laila was not turning to Joshua
and smiling anymore. She bounced her feet and shrugged when Felicia
leaned in to ask her if she was alright. Joshua swatted a mosquito.

"Somebody need to start a fire," Joshua said. Christophe was staring
at him solemnly. Joshua shook his head no. Christophe sniffed and looked
back toward the court.

"Y'all niggas heard me?" Christophe yelled.

Skeetah passed the ball to Big Henry and yelled, "Yeah nigga, we
heard you." His voice quavered; he was breathing hard through his mouth.
Javon clambered back on the bench. Joshua let his knee slide and stick
wetly to his brother's, and then jerked it away. Sandman had put his cap
back on so that all Joshua could see of him were his strong nose and his
mouth. He was standing off to the side of the bleachers. He was looking
at the twins.

"Good day for some ball." He said this as if he were speaking to the
air. Javon grunted and pulled on the blunt. Joshua stared at Sandman.
Christophe concentrated on the flurry of movement on the court. "Sure
is a good day for some ball." Joshua saw something in Christophe's face
break; the minnow flashed and disappeared.

"Don't you have somewhere to go?"

Sandman walked over to stand in front of them. The navy blue shirt
he wore hung like a wet rag on his frame. His knuckles were bony and
distended, as large as grapes.

"I was just trying to make conversation." Sandman was staring at
them like a wary dog; Joshua could imagine a stiff, quivering tail on him.
Joshua snaked his arm behind his brother's and squeezed Christophe's
elbow hard. Christophe let out his breath as if he had been holding it.
Joshua spoke intently and quietly.

"We don't want no conversation." Looking at Sandman's face was
almost like looking at Christophe's. He had given them his full lips, his
prominent nose, the reddish cast to their skin. Something about it was
wrong, though; his features seemed confused. It was as if some child had
taken pieces of a puzzle and forced them together so that they fit in the
wrong way. Sandman opened his mouth wide in disbelief, and Joshua saw
that his teeth were yellow and seemed smashed together in his mouth;
gray lined them at the seams. He closed his mouth and it made a wet,
hollow sound.

"I just wanted to talk to my sons." Joshua stared at his wide mouth
and squeezed Christophe's arm harder. Christophe shook his elbow from
Joshua's grasp and pulled the ball into his stomach as if it hurt. His fingers
were blanched yellow against the orange rubber. He lurched forward and
stared intently at Sandman, and when he spoke, his voice was strained.

"You ain't got no sons here. Ma-mee our mama and our daddy.
Leave... us... alone." He bit the rest of it out. Christophe rocked back and
looked away across the baseball diamond to the pines glistening there.

"Joshua...."

"You don't even know which one you're talking to." Christophe spoke
without looking back at him, and his voice was small as if he spoke from
a great distance. Sandman was staring down at his feet, so Joshua stared
at the crown of his head, his thin, bony shoulders, his wet-rag shirt, his
dirty jeans, and his black and blue tennis shoes. The pain in Joshua's chest
and at the back of his throat was a panicked flapping.

"You don't know us." Joshua spoke softly. "Leave us alone."

Christophe heard his brother's quiet statement and through the
suffocating anger, he felt that he could breathe. For a minute he had
thought he would drown in it. He let out a slow, shaky breath and was
surprised; he was so angry it hurt, he was so angry he felt like he was
going to cry.

"Go 'head, Sandman," Joshua said.

Christophe let out another breath he did not know he had been
holding. It was all so stupid. All of it. He felt like he was dreaming. He
glanced at Sandman and saw him raise a hand as if he was going to say
something, then Sandman clenched his hand into a fist and let it fall. He
wiped his knuckles along the front of his jeans.

"I got business to take care of," he said, staring pointedly at the girls,
and then walked away from the bleachers. Christophe could not help but
turn to watch him. He jerked past the court and past the swings and past
the car until he ambled out along the street, walking as if his joints were
strung together with string, his gate as jarring as a puppet's. Christophe
let the ball drop to the bleachers. It bounced and stopped in the valley
between his feet. Next to him, Joshua sighed. Christophe felt something
nudge his shoulder and turned to see Javon passing him the blunt.

"Here you go."

Christophe took a hit before passing it to Joshua. Christophe closed
his eyes and held the smoke in his lungs until he could not hold his
breathe anymore, until his diaphragm began to shake and convulse in the
effort to force his mouth open. He wished he could go swimming. He
wished the game would end so he could play. He let the breath whoosh
from him, and blinked to find Joshua balancing the ball in one hand and
pulling him to his feet with the other towards the vacant court to play.
His feet hit the ground, and he could hardly tell he was running.

(HEY DID NOT TALK ABOUT IT UNTIL THE DAY BEFORE THE FOURTH
of July, three days later; Joshua had been dismissed early from
work, and they were at the fireworks tent next to the interstate
perusing the all-in-one pre-wrapped kits. They had been debating whether
to get a bunch of individual bottle rockets and roman candles and rocket
bombs; Joshua thought they'd save money if they picked and chose what
they wanted, and Christophe wanted one of the kits because it contained
a special super-bomb. In the picture pasted to the front, the bomb looked
as if it burst into a rose: a glittering, deep blue rose. Christophe had never
seen anything like that, and part of him wanted to buy it because he just
wanted to see if it was possible. He wanted to know if someone could make
something explode into such a beautiful shape, or if the small, inky drawing
on the advertisement was a sham. At the end of their small argument over
fireworks, he told Joshua this, and Joshua bent over the case silently and
squinted at the base of the bomb. He was trying to read the small print.

"I wasn't going to hit him."

Joshua nodded. "I know."

"I thought I could, but once I saw him...."

"Yeah."

"I know he ain't nothing-but it was like looking at you. His face."

Joshua had lost the tiny print. He skimmed it like a crossword puzzle
for a word, and found the small script. Christophe squatted next to him
and leaned in to peer at the writing. His shoulders brushed his brother's. Joshua sniffed. They had gone with Paul to a farm further up in the
country to pick out a goat to barbecue for the fourth. The goat had small,
intelligent black eyes, white and black spotted fur, and four marbled
horns. Christophe had been freaked out by it; he had said it looked
like the devil and Uncle Paul had laughed. They had watched the man
slaughter it; he had done it the old way and bought a sharp knife quickly
across the bottom of the throat, thrusting upward. Joshua thought he
could have done it a better way, because he saw the goat toss his head and
jerk after the blood started to cascade from his neck to splatter the muddy
ground. Its mouth had moved soundlessly as if it was trying to breathe
and it had kicked as if it was wiping at a tuft of grass in the earth with its
foot, and then it had stilled. Christophe had asked the man why he hadn't
shot the thing in the head. The man, who was thin and red-skinned at
the neck and forearms and had a head full of thick, bushy white hair, had
laughed. He said something about fried brains. Christophe said he was
going to throw up. Joshua could smell the musty odor of goat hair and
he remembered the rich, heavy, offal scent of the blood, now. Uncle Paul
was at his house; he was smoking and basting the goat. He would tend it
all night. The print was too small to read.

"I think we should get it."

Christophe needed to get a QP from Dunny, and he needed to dump
Joshua. The fourth would be a good day for making money-everybody
wanted to get high on a holiday. Christophe told Joshua he needed to see
Dunny after they left the fireworks stand, and asked Joshua if he wanted
him to drop him off at the house or at Laila's or by Uncle Paul's. He paused
a long time. Joshua spoke against the fist on his cheek and asserted that
he was alright, he wanted to ride. Christophe resigned himself to Joshua's
company. They watched the headlights cut through the darkness before
them and Joshua began to search through the CD for a song he wanted
to hear. For the first time in a long time, the thought of waking up the
next morning to the summer didn't depress him. When he was younger,
Christmas had been his favorite holiday, but as he'd gotten older, he'd
developed a new appreciation for the fourth. Everything about the day
was an indulgence: the new outfit he'd treated himself to, the barbecue,
crawfish, and shrimp, the largesse of his extended family, the liquor, the weed, the fireworks, the girls in short skirts and halter tops. On that day,
the heat was more than bearable; it was welcome. As Christophe turned
into Dunny's driveway and switched off the lights and the car, he prayed
it would not rain the next day.